Blogs

Data matters? Indeed it does!
At least 36% of ATS staff members are data geeks. So said a Facebook post on National Statistics Day in October 2015. Of our current staff of 20, at least eight work closely with the tasks of gathering and analyzing a wealth of data collected through the Annual Report Forms, the Entering Student, Graduating Student, and Alumnae/I Questionnaires, and the various surveys conducted by our research department on behalf of projects such as the Educational Models and Practices project and the Economic Challenges Facing Future Ministers project.
As the keeper of all these data, ATS is in a unique position to determine what ...

Glaucoma
The Task Force on Glaucoma has issued ICO Guidelines for Glaucoma Eye Care , international guidelines for the evaluation and management of glaucoma, based on existing guidelines and other resources. The Guidelines summarize core requirements for the appropriate care of open and closed angle glaucoma and consider low and intermediate to high-resource settings.
Translation and adaption of the ICO Guidelines for non-commercial use is encouraged, but please credit the ICO. The ICO asks that a copy of any translated or adapted documents be sent info@icoph.org for ICO records.
The ICO Guidelines are designed to be a working document and ...

On Mother’s Day, we celebrate and show appreciation for
our moms, and for moms everywhere. We thank our moms for all that they do, and
for their love, encouragement, and support. In honor of these women who have
shaped our lives, YWCA USA asked our staff to share some of the important
lessons learned from their moms. Here are a few:
Holly
Jones, Director, Member Services: Growing up as the daughter of a
public school teacher in the South, I was one of the few white children that
remained in the schools during desegregation. Through this life experience, my
mom taught me how critical it is to be physically present in the fight for
racial justice. ...

Last year, a major scientific conference took place in Paris before the city hosted COP21 – the 21st United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change Conference of the Parties. The event was titled “ Our Common Future under Climate Change ,” and it explored climate change in an innovative way: Almost 2000 scientists from 100 countries and across disciplines met for four days in July. They discussed not only the current state of climate science and its relationships to other global challenges and sustainable development, but also new ways of connecting science to policy and action – supporting science that can help policy-makers and people around the world ...

Whether you serve members in a trade association or individual membership association, value is something that members want to receive from you. And sometimes one of the most valuable benefits that can be uniquely supplied by a membership organization is research conducted with or on the behalf of your members.
Here are some examples of association sponsored research that members value either because it provides guidance to them or visibility to their profession.
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Member Polling Research – Gathering member perspective on important, newsworthy topics and then sharing it with the media can demonstrate the influence and ...

Mobile Marketing
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April 26, 2016
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Why Mobile Marketing Matters and How To Keep It Simple
Mobile marketing can sound mysterious and confusing with the
complexities of responsive design and the technicalities and legalities
of SMS marketing. So let’s concentrate on some of the fundamentals about
why it matters and how just about any type of businesses can benefit from mobile .
Here are some mobile marketing basics to remember, without getting ...

As associations explore the new world of online community platforms, those tasked with managing these member communities to success can learn from the space travelers and interstellar heroes who have ventured into similarly uncharted territory.
Space: The final frontier.
A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away …
OK, you get the picture. Many association executives see online communities as that final frontier—a vast unknown universe. It's easy to understand why online communities are still gathering momentum within the association world. People are intimidated, afraid, and intrigued by online communities because they're constantly evolving, ...

American 1 Awarded 5-Star Rating from Bankrate.com
11/30/2015
Jackson, MI - American 1 Credit Union has been recognized as a 5-Star financial institution by Bankrate.com’s Safe & Sound Ratings service, one of only three credit unions in Michigan to receive the highest rating. The “Superior” rating is a ranking of relative financial strength and stability. For 17 years Bankrate.com has given consumers information on the relative strength and stability of banks, savings institutions and credit unions.
“In today’s economic climate, it’s important for consumers to trust that their money is protected,” said Scott Kim, CEO of Bankrate.com. “Earning ...

Check this out:
That’s a big boulder (with my GigaPan for scale) at Marshall’s Beach, San Francisco, right around the corner from the Golden Gate Bridge:
The big boulder is mantled in colluvium derived from the weathering of the serpentinite mélange exposed along the beach here. I don’t know whether this boulder is close to its bedrock source point, or whether it’s a “knocker” that weathered out some tens of meters uphill, became incorporated into the colluvium, and has been on its way downhill for some time. Regardless, it’s on the move, and it has reached the beach. Unusual levels of rain and wave action the previous week undermined ...

Shamans of old knew they could bend the credulous to their will (and make a boatload of money) if the shaman could predict something like a storm, or an eclipse. “This very evening, the Night Wolf will devour the Moon Virgin! But if you pay me many coins of silver, I will force Night Wolf to cough the Moon Virgin back up, unharmed!” Humorist and author P.J. O’Rourke used a version of that story 20 years ago, in All the Trouble in the World , to describe fundraising letters from Greenpeace to help solve global warming. But everyone does it now: just substitute global warming, or terrorism, as the problem, and propose a magical solution so that people will ...

Trade-In program saves Open Mobile customers money by offering instant credit for an old device when purchasing a new one
August 5, 2015
SAN JUAN, PUERTO RICO -- Open Mobile, one of the fastest growing mobile network operators in Puerto Rico, is partnering with Assurant Solutions on an innovative trade-in program that enables customers purchasing a new mobile phone to get instant credit for their old one. “Service and savings are both very important to our customers,” said Juan Saca, CEO of Open Mobile. “Through this program, our customers have more affordable, convenient access to the latest mobile handset technology. New phones can be expensive, ...

Note: This post was updated on June 16, 2015.
AOTA
member Kathleen Matuska, PhD, OTR/L, was recently interviewed for two
segments with TV personality and health advocate Meredith Vieira on the
benefits of occupational therapy for people with Multiple Sclerosis (MS)
and the ways that OTs can help clients cope with symptoms.
Vieira’s
husband Richard Cohen lives with MS. He first noticed symptoms in his
mid-twenties. Independence is important to Vieira and Cohen, parents of
three children.
Photo by Digitas Photos .
...

POSITIVE RELATIONSHIPS AND GOOD COMMUNICATION
by Katie Jackson
posted on 5/27/15
Hidden behind Washington State Senate’s podium, my knees shook as the words began to spill out of my mouth. I had been waiting for this moment for four years, and there I stood reciting a speech I had practice thousands of times. Youth lieutenant governor, the person who presides over the Senate, was the position I had wanted to run for, for the longest time.
Youth and Government™ is a YMCA run program that gives teens the opportunity to learn about and work hands on with the state government. I started the program as a small 8th grader, who was ...

This is the third part in our series looking at recent announcements by Amazon, Microsoft and other cloud service providers regarding new encryption and key management services. Let’s talk about log collection and active monitoring as a security best practice, and as a requirement to meet PCI DSS security requirements. Since the PCI DSS guidelines implement common security best practices, they are a good starting point for evaluating the security of any application and platform that processes sensitive data. Following the practice of the first part of this series we will use the PCI document “PCI DSS Cloud Computing Guidelines, Version 2.0” as our reference point, ...

Thoughts on Big Media…
Call me old-fashioned, but what happened to the long ago days of the
Walter Cronkite’s, Howard Kurtz’s and other objective reporters alike?
Often, I turn on the tube, flip the newspaper (or kindle), listen to the
radio or surf the web and wonder to myself, “What is this junk?”
Mediums are dominated by celebrity gossip, Casey Anthony and “reality”
TV “supaaastars” (Molly Shannon pun). Network news from far left to
right are filling us with nonessential news and it’s supporting a
country of misinformed citizens.
Molly Shannon is a Superstaar!
What happened? I think it’s the nature of media ownership ...

Philadelphia, PA, August 15, 2014 – At the August 2 meeting of its directors, the leadership of the American Board of Internal Medicine (ABIM) agreed that the current language used for reporting whether or not ABIM Board Certified physicians are meeting requirements in ABIM's new Maintenance of Certification (MOC) program is causing legitimate confusion because many physicians hold some certificates which are grandfathered, or “lifetime” certificates. These physicians are encouraged but not required to participate in MOC for those certifications. Currently, all ABIM physicians are reported as either Meeting or Not Meeting MOC Requirements.
ABIM adopted the ...

Tactics for Larger Trout
Early one summer I overheard a couple of guys talking about fly
fishing. One of them said that fly fishing is more fun but you don't
catch big trout on flies because they don't feed on small insects.
Another guy came into our fly shop
and looked at the tiny artificials on the counter and was amazed at
their small size. "What do you catch on these, minnows?" he asked. Most
of us progress through a natural evolution in fly fishing. We start as a
beginner with low expectations. After gaining a little confidence by
landing a few trout with consistency, we start to keep score. Some
anglers take this to extreme keeping ...

Youth Development and Intervention Program
Provides leadership in creating programs, which serves at-risk youth
linking parental/guardian involvement. Strategies applied include
community bridge building, teen summits, parenting skills training,
tutoring, and employability skills training/job placement services. All
activities are designed to help young people who are often caught up in
the vicious cycle of peer pressure, illegal conduct, uncooperative
behavior and broken contracts that lead to the legal system. Serves
youth between the ages of 10 through 18 years old.
NULITES (National Urban League Incentives To Excel
and Succeed) NULITES ...

I am reposting this great blog by Greg Nathan:
​
Are You a Giver or a Taker?
09 Oct 2014
Last week I had the opportunity to participate in an online interview with a talented young research psychologist from Harvard called Adam Grant. Adam is the author of the best seller, “Give and Take”. His big question has been whether it pays in life to be generous. According to his research, there are broadly three types of people: Givers who genuinely try to make a difference; Takers who are basically just out for themselves; and Matchers (the most common type) who do a bit of both but generally try to act fairly. I found this question of whether it pays to ...